To advance to love our fear thoughts need to be changed and responsibility for inner choice remembered. Workbook Lesson 196 outlines our fear thoughts and the steps to love.
The fearful thoughts are:
1.You can attack another and be free yourself. Unless you see that this, at least must be entirely impossible, how could there be escape.
When we attack others we attack ourselves but don’t realise it. The obvious consequence of attacking others is that we have to defend ourselves but we are usually not aware of the self attack.
2. While you believed attack could be directed outwards and returned from outside to within, it seemed to be an enemy outside you had to fear. And thus a god outside yourself became your mortal enemy; the source of fear.
We also are not aware that we make God into an enemy by attacking others. But we believe God is separate and outside so our projections of attack land not only on our brothers but God himself. God or Love becomes something to be feared.
The steps out of fear are:
1. It can be but myself I crucify. Once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear. You cannot then believe that fear is caused without.
Once we are aware that the cause of fear is within we start of wake up. When we stop blaming others and God for our distress and we no longer are afraid of them. If we understand the cause of fear is within we stop looking for and finding other causes. Then we no longer fear God or love.
2. When you realize, once and for all, that it is you you fear, the mind perceives itself as split. Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you. Yet in this instant is the time as well in which salvation comes. For fear of God has disappeared. And you can call on Him to save you from illusions by His Love.
When we take responsibility for fear we instinctively know there is not just fear within but love as well. When we remember our mind is split between love and fear then we regain the power of choice. Choosing love is now an option because love is no longer seen as fearful.
It seems strange that love only becomes a choice once fear is also seen as a choice. Choice becomes our freedom and strength. When we choose love, fear is seen as an illusion, unreal and in the end impossible.
You see neither guilt nor salvation as in your own mind and nowhere else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved. Lesson 70.
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